TRU carpentry camp a primer for the young to consider trades training
Credit to Author: Derrick Penner| Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2019 18:15:13 +0000
Thompson Rivers University’s trades training program put a group of girls, ages 12 to 15, to work building a daycare playhouse last week, teaching them how to use tools, read blueprints and work as a team.
And in the long run, officials hope that this experience, will play a part in filling the yawning gap being created between the retiring baby-boomers in the skilled trades and new apprentices needed to take over.
Over the next decade, the province expects there to be 118,000 job openings in the trades, transportation and among equipment operators, according to the Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Training labour market outlook.
Almost three quarters of those openings will be to replace workers leaving the labour force, and Baldev Pooni, dean of trades and technology at TRU worries about attracting enough young people to trades training, hence the camp.
“This type of exposure engages young minds and plants the idea that they too can choose trades as a viable and meaningful career option,” said Heather Hamilton, manager of industry and contract training at TRU about the rationale for the camp.
The camp, which drew 14 girls to attend, was delivered by B.C.’s Industry Training Authority, which oversees trades training in the province, and paid for by a federal initiative called the union training and innovation program, which maintains a specific women in construction fund.
Baldev Pooni, dean of the trades and technology department at Thompson Rivers University, who is keen to recruit more sponsors and apprentices for skilled-trade training programs to fill building shortages of workers in the field.
Appealing to women, for what have traditionally been viewed as male-dominated careers, as well as Aboriginal students are specific strategies to cope with the considerable need, Pooni said.
“If you don’t catch that interest by the time (students) hit Grade 9 or 10, then you’ve lost them,” Pooni said.
“The evidence of that I’ve seen in the local community here (in Kamloops) is, more than ever, in the past couple of years, I’ve had employers come on campus hiring people and wanting to hire people before they even graduate,” Pooni added referring to the pre-apprenticeship foundation courses that TRU teaches.
“So we see that demand, the request for technical training, as an indicator of what the (need) is.”
In 2017, the B.C. Construction Association estimated that over the coming decade, its employers would run short of 14,200 skilled tradespeople and to fill the gap, it would need to attract one in 12 high school graduates to apprenticeship programs.
However, in that year, only one in 70 high school graduates were entering trades training and the ratio decreased for the first time after four years of growth.
“It’s kind of difficult to project, but I believe looking from a high level, we are falling short of having enough people going into apprenticeship (programs) for our need to be able to (replace) the number of people leaving,” Pooni said.
A demographic trend in British Columbia schools that saw secondary enrolments shrink over a period of time hasn’t helped, Pooni added, nor has the downturn in Alberta’s oil industry starting around 2014, which saw a drop in apprenticeship opportunities.
The demand for apprenticeship training is driven by employer sponsorship, and Canada’s national red-seal training system makes apprentices mobile across borders.
And running counter to the longer-term demographic trends inside B.C., Pooni said the reduction in employment in Alberta caused a corresponding decline in apprenticeship participation across the country.
Starting young to build the future, Thompson Rivers University’s trades and technology training department staged a carpentry camp for girls on campus where participants ages 12 to 15 helped build a play house for a daycare centre. The idea was to spark interest for a future in carpentry. Photo: Courtesy of Thompson Rivers University. In B.C., the number of registered apprentices declined six per cent from 2014 to 2017.
The difficulty is, Pooni said, the economy tends to improve faster than education authorities can wind training back up.
“Demand doesn’t wait four years (the length of time apprenticeship training takes) for the turn to happen,” Pooni said.
So employers need to be encouraged to continue their investments in sponsorship and employee training to keep replenishing the ranks of journeyperson trades.
The Industry Training Authority is seeing an increase in the number of sponsors, apprentices and certifications of journeyperson trades, according to Rod Bianchini, interim chief operating officer at the agency.
With major infrastructure projects, such as the multi-billion-dollar LNG Canada development at Kitimat, Bianchini said in an email that the ITA sees an increased demand for apprentices in construction-related trades such as carpentry, electrical work, steam and pipefitting and machining.
In the most recent fiscal year, the ITA saw 38,637 apprentices registered in training programs, an increase from 37,703 in the previous year, but still off the 39.431 registered in 2014.